New Products
The Badger State Ethanol plant will soon start making three new products:
• Food-grade corn germ, from which corn oil can be extracted.
• Refined protein product, exported to the Far East and the Pacific Rim.
• Fiber in two grades - animal, and food-grade which is milled into high-fiber corn bran flour and can be substituted for up to as much as 20 percent of wheat flour in recipes.
MONROE - Learning a new job can lead to some pent-up pressure and the need to let off a little steam, loudly.
The Badger State Ethanol plant is going through the growing pains of expansion to create three new products in the near future. Right now the plant produces ethanol, distillers grain and carbon dioxide.
"We're bringing new equipment on line and shaking the bugs out," Badger State President and General Manager Gary Kramer said.
Part of the job of bringing new equipment online is identifying all the trouble spots to correct, he said.
Unfortunately for its neighbors, the learning curve has the plant blowing its pressure value.
The safety relief valve has been going off the past couple of weeks "more often than usual - probably more so than in the last five years," Kramer said.
Kramer describes the sound as a loud scream.
"Recently, I heard a noise myself when I was leaving for work," said Alderman Charles Schuringa, who lives on Second Avenue West, about five blocks from the plant. He said he didn't hear it when he returned home later that morning. The noise was intermittent.
The problem should be alleviated as the plant and its personnel get the hang of the new processes, Kramer said.
As an added bonus, the new processing equipment will make hammer mills a thing of the past.
The hammer mill shreds corn into fine particles. Pivoting hammers swing on the ends of a rotor at a high speed inside a drum. Corn fed into the drum is "hammered" into small pieces to expose the starch inside the kernel, and then expelled.
The noisiest part of the plant has historically been the hammer mills, Kramer said. "Eventually, those will be turned off because of the different process."
Monroe Police Chief Fred Kelley said the city has no ordinance specifying acceptable decibel levels. The language in the city ordinance states "unusually loud," he said, and is based on other communities' ordinances.
"As long as it doesn't annoy the neighbors and we don't get any calls," he said, the police don't get involved.
Kramer said the ethanol plant is "working hard to be good neighbors," and he agrees that loud noises are unacceptable.
"We hear a steady hum at the plant," Kramer said. But he said they need help from neighbors to identify noises, "so we can track it down."
Some of the plant's conveyor blowers are louder than acceptable in the long term, he said, and will need sound proofing around them to deaden the noise.
For another unacceptable noise, the plant came up with a different solution. The plant recently replaced one corn conveyor that was used for less than a month.
The conveyor was bought for $50,000 to $60,000 less than a year ago and sat atop a silo. But Kramer said it sounded like a coyote howling continuously, and they could not get it to stop.
Michael Johnson and his wife, Ann, had heard the noise from their home on Carnie Road, about a mile west of plant. They contacted The Monroe Times by e-mail Nov. 20 to inquire about the "a loud howling or screeching noise" that was "loud enough to hamper sleep" coming from the direction of the ethanol plant.
But when contacted Feb. 1, Johnson said they were "not hearing much anymore."
What they do hear is "a little bit of background noise" like a hum, he said, and most of that comes during an east wind.
Schuringa said other residents in the area had contacted him about the howling noise in November and December, and he brought it to the attention of the Public Safety Committee Jan. 14.
Schuringa said he hasn't heard from any residents since that time; however, he still plans to "walk the premises" of the plant with Nathan Klassy, secretary of the Board of Directors for Badger State Ethanol.
Klassy said he and Schuringa will be doing that during the "first nice weather."
Kramer said the noisy conveyor equipment was "cut into about six pieces" a month or two ago, and it sits in a scrap heap now.
The Badger State Ethanol plant is going through the growing pains of expansion to create three new products in the near future. Right now the plant produces ethanol, distillers grain and carbon dioxide.
"We're bringing new equipment on line and shaking the bugs out," Badger State President and General Manager Gary Kramer said.
Part of the job of bringing new equipment online is identifying all the trouble spots to correct, he said.
Unfortunately for its neighbors, the learning curve has the plant blowing its pressure value.
The safety relief valve has been going off the past couple of weeks "more often than usual - probably more so than in the last five years," Kramer said.
Kramer describes the sound as a loud scream.
"Recently, I heard a noise myself when I was leaving for work," said Alderman Charles Schuringa, who lives on Second Avenue West, about five blocks from the plant. He said he didn't hear it when he returned home later that morning. The noise was intermittent.
The problem should be alleviated as the plant and its personnel get the hang of the new processes, Kramer said.
As an added bonus, the new processing equipment will make hammer mills a thing of the past.
The hammer mill shreds corn into fine particles. Pivoting hammers swing on the ends of a rotor at a high speed inside a drum. Corn fed into the drum is "hammered" into small pieces to expose the starch inside the kernel, and then expelled.
The noisiest part of the plant has historically been the hammer mills, Kramer said. "Eventually, those will be turned off because of the different process."
Monroe Police Chief Fred Kelley said the city has no ordinance specifying acceptable decibel levels. The language in the city ordinance states "unusually loud," he said, and is based on other communities' ordinances.
"As long as it doesn't annoy the neighbors and we don't get any calls," he said, the police don't get involved.
Kramer said the ethanol plant is "working hard to be good neighbors," and he agrees that loud noises are unacceptable.
"We hear a steady hum at the plant," Kramer said. But he said they need help from neighbors to identify noises, "so we can track it down."
Some of the plant's conveyor blowers are louder than acceptable in the long term, he said, and will need sound proofing around them to deaden the noise.
For another unacceptable noise, the plant came up with a different solution. The plant recently replaced one corn conveyor that was used for less than a month.
The conveyor was bought for $50,000 to $60,000 less than a year ago and sat atop a silo. But Kramer said it sounded like a coyote howling continuously, and they could not get it to stop.
Michael Johnson and his wife, Ann, had heard the noise from their home on Carnie Road, about a mile west of plant. They contacted The Monroe Times by e-mail Nov. 20 to inquire about the "a loud howling or screeching noise" that was "loud enough to hamper sleep" coming from the direction of the ethanol plant.
But when contacted Feb. 1, Johnson said they were "not hearing much anymore."
What they do hear is "a little bit of background noise" like a hum, he said, and most of that comes during an east wind.
Schuringa said other residents in the area had contacted him about the howling noise in November and December, and he brought it to the attention of the Public Safety Committee Jan. 14.
Schuringa said he hasn't heard from any residents since that time; however, he still plans to "walk the premises" of the plant with Nathan Klassy, secretary of the Board of Directors for Badger State Ethanol.
Klassy said he and Schuringa will be doing that during the "first nice weather."
Kramer said the noisy conveyor equipment was "cut into about six pieces" a month or two ago, and it sits in a scrap heap now.